In the field related to the cutting of pieces or patches of fabric, or similar material, into appropriately shaped portions, in particular for manufacturing suits or other clothing items, cutting machines are used which have a jigsaw that simultaneously operates on a certain quantity of superposed layers (numbering a few tens, for instance 40–50 layers), which are stacked on a bristle support and held there by means of a vacuum appropriately applied from the side of said bristle support.
To feed the fabric to be cut to said prior art machines, in manufacturing plants appropriate folding apparatuses are employed, which unroll the ribbon-like material from a respective reel arranging it in zigzag fashion, in such a way as to define a plurality of superposed layers, which must then be transferred, for their simultaneous cut, on the bristle cutting plane of known machines.
In practice, according to the procedure for supplying or feeding the ribbon-like material which is the basis for the operation of said known manufacturing plants, the ribbon-like material, which is supported by a single reel, is completely unrolled. For such prior art machines, it is neither envisaged nor economically practical to use the ribbon-like material of a respective reel only partially, in view of cutting fabric portions destined to the manufacture of a limited number of clothing items.
With prior art machines, therefore, there is a tendency to produce an excessive number of fabric cuts for an overabundant number of clothing items, which risk remaining unsold with the deriving economic losses for the manufacturing companies; conversely, if demand is only limited to a small number of said clothing items, it is preferred to forego such production runs, with the deriving loss of the work order and related revenues.
In prior art plants, moreover, said folding apparatuses are complex, costly, and with an insufficient operating rate, which entails excessive delays in the supply to the cutting machines downstream of the folding machines. The entire production cycle of the plant is thus slowed down.
A further drawback that is present in prior art systems concerns the way in which the reels are positioned in the unrolling station associated to the folding device. The reels supporting the ribbon-like material must be kept raised by pincers or the like, which engage the end parts of the reel and/or of the support core, to allow the insertion of a respective support shaft of the unrolling station, which is inserted into the central hole provided in the support core of the reel Said core for supporting the ribbon-like material of the reel is made of cardboard, which is easily deformed by flexing and is of poor quality, which makes it performing such loading operations at the unrolling station difficult and awkward. In extreme cases, when the ribbon-like fabric is particularly delicate, the execution of such operations could even cause damage to said product.